BEg2 ch 28 brief summary

[Michael Bailey]

Party time - this is a detailed description of the shindig thrown by
Gabriel Ice with the wreckage Tworkeffx had saved against its ruins, or
something like that

Egads, what else happens (before we get to do some detailing on the
details) -

Horst & Maxine drop the kids at Ernie & Elaine’s & ride the subway down to
SoHo, where the party is taking place in the offices of Tworkeffx in a
building that looks like an Italian palazzo.

Good attendance. Loud. Security guards. Lots of 90s nostalgia.

Maxine meets up with Vyrva, Justin, and Lucas.

Eric is there.
“Yo, Maxi.” Eric, hair dyed a sort of pale electric green, a flirtatious
eye, a grin that on analysis might test over in the shit-eating part of the
scale. Maxine senses Horst, invisibly nearby, gazing at them, about to
lapse into sad-sack mode. Oy vey.
            “Did you see my husband around here anyplace?” Loud enough for
Horst if he’s there to hear.


         “Your what?”

         “Oh,” normal tone, “sort of quasi ex-husband, did I not ever
mention that?”

         “Big surprise,” mumbling cheerfully, “

- hmm, maybe she and Eric were fucking after all?
Not my business.
But if Horst is lapsing into sad-sack mode - well, she doesn’t actually see
this - but she does know him pretty well - but there may be some
wish-fulfillment element here, of her wanting him to be depressed by her
male friend’s presence - or she knows that he’s not into competing for her
attention - part of that stolid Midwestern affect - so, wanting him back
(and I think it’s pretty clear that she does)(for one thing, he’s loaded
and they’re physically compatible - oops, that’s two things - and as
Lucas’s rejected girlfriend mentioned in the bathroom, and Driscoll in her
song also referred to in passing, the dating scene is brutal - that’s 3
things & im sure there’re more, like Ziggy and Otis to name two…)
Okay I’m fascinated by the Horst-Maxine dynamic.

But back to the summary!

Maxine introduces Eric to Driscoll - maybe she really does want everyone to
be connected, as she scolded herself for in Chandler Pratt’s office
dreaming up a connection between young rapper Darren and DeepArcher graphic
artist Cassidy.
Driscoll & Eric exchange #s and write them on their hands or something…

Then Eric recruits Maxine to go look for Felix Boïngeaux (umlaut on an “I”?
Keyboard has it. New for me) because Felix had told Eric he wanted to tell
Maxine something important.

They look in the restrooms. They find Boïngeaux in the “godfather of
postmodern toilets,”

Where (apparently they’re still in the vast bathroom) Gabriel Ice is also,
standing at the bar (in the bathroom, which also features a DJ and line
dancing) talking to a “small knot” of admirers.

But apparently loud enough for Maxine to hear that he’s planning to take
his server farms way up north where the ambient temperature will save on
cooling costs.

This pisses her off to the point of fondling her sidearm.

Not having told Maxine the important thing that he’s supposedly itching to
tell her, Felix sidles over to join the knot of admirers.

She and Horst enjoy the party to some extent till it’s over, and catch a
cab, of which the driver is listening to some Arabic talk. But it’s not the
radio. Instead the driver grabs a handset and joins in what sounds like an
argument.



An analysis of a savory ambiguity a-and two important phrases in the
description of the cab ride (for anoraks):

It’s like hearing a party from another room, though Maxine notices there’s
no music, no laughing. High emotion all right, but closer to tears or
anger. Men talking over each other, shouting, interrupting. A couple of the
voices might be women’s, though later it will seem they could have belonged
to high-pitched men. The only word Maxine recognizes, and she hears it more
than once, is Inshallah. “Arabic for ‘whatever,’” Horst nods.”



Is Horst nodding as he says, “Arabic for whatever,” in essence
“mansplaining?”
(Because Maxine has just been said to recognize it.)

Or, is it Maxine who says, “Arabic for whatever,” and Horst is nodding in
agreement?

In either case, the cabbie’s corrective retort, “If it is God’s will,” is -
well, he’s like “The Other” -

 Maxine and Horst share a worldview and are used to a comfortable
lifestyle, and for them, “Arabic for whatever,” is a mild witticism showing
they both have encountered the word and imputing a context for it similar
to their understanding of “whatever” as “it’s out of my hands & anything
could happen, and/or I’m not going to give you much shit about it but I’m
not impressed,”

For the driver, the God part of it is important. You would think that’d
make him all sweet-natured & stuff. And maybe he is —-


“later it will seem they could be high-pitched men’s.”

The “though later it will seem” is like - given the events of the next
days, everyone will blow shit like this way out of proportion. Arabic
taxicab dispatch sounds about the same as terrorist plotting - if you
translated an episode of Taxi into Arabic there’s a lot of yelling, eg - or
like that episode of 30 Rock where Liz Lemon reports her Arabic neighbors
when she sees them holding planning sessions with maps for what turns out
to be their entry for the TV show “The Amazing Race”

- and this undercurrent (of dubiety) is buttressed by the closing paragraph
in the chapter:

They’re waiting at a light. “If it is God’s will,” the driver corrects him,
half turning in his seat so that Maxine happens to be looking him in the
face. What she sees there will keep her from getting to sleep right away.
Or that’s how she’ll remember it.



She probably went to sleep right away anyway, come on, open bar, all night
on your feet.